The Truth Is, Sometimes Violence is Absolutely Necessary

“If somebody takes your kids; does it matter to you how you get them back,” ask Sam Childers speaking at the end of the new movie written about his life as the “Machine Gun Preacher”. Childers is the founder of “Angels of East Africa”, an organization that finds parent-less children in the war-torn regions of South Sudan and Uganda and brings them to safety. He protects them from becoming child soldiers of the devil himself, Joseph Kony, the leader of the “Lord’s Resistance Army”.

The movie goes little into this notorious leader, but it does explain the route taken by Childers to do what other countries in the world will not do. He goes after the rebels himself. I get it, we don’t like butting into other people’s business because we figured at some point; they’ll get up and do something about it. America finds a way to become intertwined in Iraq and Afghanistan, two countries that do not want us there, but we can’t interfere in a country that desperately needs our help, a country that wants our help? Childers understood that children cannot fight their own battles, not against someone as sadistic as Kony, who truly believes that he is doing the work of God. He wants Uganda to be a “Christian” nation, but what he himself is doing, is not Christian. He cannot see it; he believes he is in a “just” war against his own country.

“Machine Gun Preacher” explores the brutality of this “war”. In the movie, Childers takes down some rebels, only to find a pit full of children. He only has one truck and only so much room. He takes as many as he can, promising to return. He does return to get them, but other rebels come along and kill the remaining children. Not his fault, of course. Childers could not have foreseen what was going to occur. It just made him fight harder for the children. He didn’t give up; even after everything he’d seen.

People need to see this movie. I’ve read many times of the horrors going on in Sudan, in Uganda; never really seeing the pictures of what the children are going through. “Machine Gun Preacher” opened my eyes. We can’t just throw money at it and hope it goes away. We should help these children; we should help Sam Childers. He cannot do it alone.


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